Friday, 6 December 2019

Darkest Winter

It was 5 minutes to 8 a.m. when I woke this morning and boy do I feel great.  It is just not usual for me to sleep this late!  The big plus is that I feel really really awake and energetic.  I may yet get this house mostly tidied and readied for Christmas. 

The landlord got groceries for me yesterday.  In those groceries among the spices, was a bag of poppy seeds.  I asked if he was hoping for poppy seed rolls and he looked rather sheepish and hemmed and hawed. A guy can dream, says he.  Hahaha He might get them too.  With our missing bakery, I dream of pastry making for Saturday morning treats and you can tell how good I feel.  I feel like making these.

I sorted toys yesterday and cleaned under beds. Today floors and dusting . Slowly things will be ready for Christmas.  Slowly it will be done.  

I was thinking about scents this morning, not perfumes so much as scents that bring us back to something from long ago, deeply remembered from childhood. Christmas is surely a time of year where scents bring things back.  The smell of a pine or spruce tree fresh harvested, of peppermint and cookies and buns out of the oven, of turkey and mom's stuffing.  

This morning I was thinking of other lovely scents.  I remember the scent of roses and lavender.  They are scents I gave always loved.  I have a shower wash that is lavender scented and it took me not to childhood but to an endless quest for lavender in my garden.  I never did have any luck getting it to grow in my gardens and it made me wonder if I should try some here in this sunny place.  It is a Mediterranean species but maybe here in the open?



I know it will strike some odd but this is the season for garden catalogues.  I wait for them at this time of year with its  darkest days and longest night.  Spring garden catalogues are the most exciting thing I can imagine to rid me of any lingering winter woes.  As eagerly as I waited for the Christmas catalogue from Sears and Eatons when I was a kid, I wait for the garden catalogue now.  There are some things the internet can never replace.  


Though I haven't planted a garden in any real way for a while now, I mean to this spring and even though I prepare for Christmas, I dream of flowers and spring.




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